


Sing the Witchblood

by Desiderii



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiderii/pseuds/Desiderii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Callie, a Yellow Jeweled Priestess, sneaks from the temple with an ancient book of Witchsongs to discover what she can about her Sister's disappearance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing the Witchblood

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot in the BJT universe that I nearly gave myself a heart attack because I couldn't find. Since it is, technically, fanfiction, I decided to archive it here so I won't lose it again.

The young priestess clutched a large, leather-bound folder to her chest as she hurried down the stone hallway of the sanctuary. No one visited the her home's tiny library unless they had business there, and any business should never draw them to the shelf where the oldest histories were stored. Callie hoped that she would have the folder returned before the Head Priestess found her dusty fingerprints proclaiming the theft. Fear at her possible discovery had her normally dark-skinned face bloodless pale as she paused, shivering, at the crossing hall and looked timidly both ways. No one. No one there.

_So far so good_. If only her steps didn't fall so loudly. Even barefoot, the slap of skin on stone seemed to make the walls vibrate. She tiptoed as quietly, and as swiftly, as she could. The other priestesses had been sleeping as she'd passed out of the dormitories, but even with her Sisters snug in their beds Callie was half-convinced that any moment someone would hear her moving and open one of the doors lining the hall.

Torchlight caught at the smooth planes of her face as she hurried on, intent on the door at the end of the hall. A light smattering of echoed footfalls behind her sent her heart into her mouth as she made a final dash into the night outside and leaned against the door for a moment to listen. If someone had heard her, seen her, or sensed her then she'd have no choice but to return and hand back the yellowed sheaf of parchment. Returning would only make the folder more difficult for her to acquire a second time and she didn't know if she had enough courage to try this twice. She listened, straining for any sound, just to make sure.

It was nothing. No one. Just another restless priestess awake in another part of the complex.

Destination in mind, the witch passed through the decorative wrought-iron gate and made her way towards the city and its central gardens. Callie attempted to keep to the shadows, her hands splayed on the soft leather of the folder, feeling the rough binding bite at her fingers as she shifted them to keep the delicate pages from escaping.

It was crazy, she knew, to go out in the city at night, alone, and without an Escort. But then, an Escort would only get in her way; he would somehow diminish what she was doing and make it less hers. A Yellow jeweled Priestess, she wasn't exactly defenseless, and this part of Shalador hadn't succumbed entirely to the strange times. She was female, however, and petite, and the rest of Terrielle had started to become more and more dangerous at night even for Blood.

_I should be fine_. She repeated the words to herself several times. This whole idea was crazy. Why had she ever thought this was a good idea?

The streets of the city were empty this late at night except for a few of the Blood who were still celebrating small triumphs and drowning small losses. The bars and taverns spilled light into the streets that caught at her dark form, but Callie moved swiftly past, ignoring even the sprawled drunks that would never have dared pass out in public even a year before. Times were changing.

She hurried. Knowing her psychic scent was full of fear that would draw the predatory who were beginning to move into the territory was one thing. Attempting to control that fear was quite another. Clinging to the folder as to a slender branch while drowning, Callie stepped around puddles and over cobbles until her bare feet found the grass at the entrance to the gardens.

The Alma Gardens were a sprawling maze of beds and hedges. In summer, the colors inspired the cities tailors and weavers to outdo themselves. In winter, the austere beauty drew poets from the long-lived peoples who idled beneath the leafless trees composing works of art. The gardens were the province Queen's pride and joy, but as they were open to the public there were a few nooks and crannies that even she didn't know by heart. Not any more.

Unerringly, even in the dark of night with only a slender moon to illuminate her path, Callie found her way to a private alcove. At one time it would have seemed the perfect place for a rendezvous or other sort of clandestine meeting. An indentation in the hedge, it was just deep enough to hide two from the casual eyes of those on the path. Inside the alcove was a decorative bench and a small fountain that had cracked several years ago. The water from the fountain flowed over the shattered edge of the basin and through the grass and the flowerbed. It had been a pleasant spot. Now the Blood avoided it without realizing why.

Callie knew why. Kneeling on the wet grass and feeling the chill as the water soaked through her skirts to her skin, she set the folder down on the stone bench beside her head and bent to stare at flower growing unmolested just beneath. The distinctive color and shape brought tears to her eyes as she reached out a hand to caress the petals.

Witchblood.

The broad petals were a deep, dark red dipped in black and arranged in a star. Tiny black spots marched up the petals towards the center, a peppered design unique to each individual bloom. It was a striking flower, dangerously poisonous. It wasn't something the Blood normally came across, let alone grew in the middle of a public park off a busy path. What tore at Callie's heart was the reason it was growing here. Witchblood only grew where a witch who was murdered violently died or was buried.

Shuddering more from cold than fear now, Callie groped in the dark for the folder she'd set down and, rocking back on her heels, she created a tiny ball of witchlight to read by. Stark yellow light illuminated the pages and provided no warmth, but it served its purpose. The parchment, yellow itself, deepened in color to a brilliant saffron in the weak, steady light. She ran her fingers over the scraped hide, picking out the scratched indentations of some ancient quill as it had scribed the contents with an ink that had faded to the rusty brown of dried blood.

The leather binder was full of sheet music. Witchsongs in the old tongue, they had been transcribed meticulously at some before-time when Witch walked the realms and had taught the priestesses at the Altar music that would aid them in their worship. It was a piece of history many thousands of years old and copied anew every time the fading words threatened to rot from the page. Authentic witchsongs taught by Witch and stored in some long-forgotten library where they were lost to the world.

Breathing rapidly and increasingly uncertain, afraid to even touch the pages here in the garden as though turning them would release the words like opening the door of a birdcage, Callie searched for the song that she'd found several days earlier. The notes tugged at her mind as she hummed the beginning of the tune. Leafing through the folder in short bursts, she searched for the notes that matched her memory. She turned a page, paused, then rapidly turned several more as she remembered about how far back the song was. 

Finally, she found it. The title was a word in the old tongue that meant 'Remembrance and Homage Through Calling the Spirit of the One Who Has Passed'. Or, more simply, 'Names.' The description at the top of the page before the music contained instructions for handling witchblood in addition to the suggestions on what instruments could be used to accompany the singer. It had been mention of witchblood that had led the young priestess to the gardens to sing. With a brief worry - swiftly squashed - about being discovered while she knelt in the wet grass, Callie lifted a hand to one more caress the petals of the flower under the bench. As she left her fingertips resting gently on the velvet petals of the deadly flower, she began to sing.

Callie's voice sounded tremulous and thin on the night air as her eyes followed the musical notation. Before she'd gone more than a few bars, she could feel the haunting quality of the song attracting attention as her voice strengthened. The attention, however, wasn't of the physical world where the water was seeping between her toes and her tiny witchlight was slowly burning out the power she'd fed it, but somewhere in the Abyss. Howling, whispering, chittering far below her and tugging at her mind, the thing in the Abyss encouraged her to continue. Continue singing, yes, but also to continue the descent that she didn't remember starting.

It was a frightening taste of the unknown. She was powerless to do anything but accept what was speaking to her. Callie was no stranger to the Abyss and the Darkness held no fear for her as a priestess, but she'd never stepped beyond her self, never worried over her power. To have something dark and feral stalking the pathways of her mind that she thought she knew so well was terrifying.

Perhaps there was a reason that some of the witchsongs were left unremembered and unsung.

Still, Callie continued to sing, gradually closing her eyes as the words and tune from the page became a part of her. One hand outstretched, she could feel the witchblood responding to her. Like the tingle of first-meeting, or the spark shared with contact after shuffling over a thick carpet, the living plant beneath her fingers began to whisper.

She quieted her song so she could hear the plant. There was one voice in it, but that voice had the echo of a barren land in shades of gray. It was a voice of frustration, of fear, of rage and vengeance. It whispered a single name over and over through Callie's fingertips, up her arm, and into her mind. When Callie heard the name, absorbed the name through her skin, she started to cry.

_Ellis Sherti_. Over and over the name came to Callie, bidden by the ancient witchsong, drawn by the magic. She couldn't stop singing even if she wanted to. This was what she'd come here to learn, to understand. The name began to overlap itself, forming a veritable flood of mental noise that threatened to overwhelm the priestess. It was a voice she recognized which made everything worse. The voice sounded so sad and so angry, full of regret and revenge.

_This must be what it's like to touch the Twisted Kingdom_. It was the only thought completely her own. Crying harder, Callie tried to continue to sing but her throat clogged and the disturbing tune - filled of the promise of vengeance and restitution as well as gentle phrases to calm the restless dead - ground to a halt. The whispering refrain faded from her mind and the dark maelstrom deep in the Abyss calmed, ceased to roil and threaten. Whatever lived within the Abyss turned its attention once more away, abandoning the dark and dangerous rising celebration that Callie hadn't even begun to understand.

Callie decorated the folder with tears as her heart bled from the reopened emotional wound. She'd wanted confirmation of who had died here but had hoped against hope that she was wrong. She'd wanted to believe that the troubles in Terrielle hadn't reached this far, this fast into Shalador. That a few drunks on the street and a couple of shady males were only signs of the future, not of the present.

_Ellis, Ellis_. She could only repeat the word to herself as she rocked slightly, her head pillowed on one arm as she leaned heavily against the bench to sob, her tears muffled. A Priestess, Ellis had been a Sister who had not come home to the altar sanctuary one night. A Sherti, as family, Ellis had been the sister who had lived alongside Callie since she was born.

There was no telling how or why Ellis had been killed here, but witchblood was sign enough that it had been bloody and brutal. With her skirts soaking wet and her body fighting wracking shudders every time the wind whipped down the path and into the alcove, Callie could barely stand up. Cold on the inside and out, she had almost no desire to make the long trek back to the sanctuary. Taking a moment to touch the witchblood again and feel the remembered, heart-breaking voice of the plant - of her sister - in her mind, she pushed herself laboriously to her feet and carefully tucked the parchment away in the folder to take with her back to the altar complex.

She hadn't wanted to know, hadn't wanted to find out if the witchsongs were as powerful and heartbreaking as she'd always known they were. The Darkness only knew what had pushed her out to the alcove and the Darkness only knew what she was going to do with the knowledge she had gained. For what it was worth, she now knew enough of what had happened to tell someone her suspicions about Ellis. She knew very little, but she still knew.

And wished she didn't.


End file.
